San Jose: Roof collapse at vacant building deemed suspicious

SAN JOSE -- Fire officials said they are "98 percent confident" there were no injuries when a portion of a vacant industrial building's roof collapsed around 5 p.m., but were bringing in search dogs to make absolutely sure nobody was stuck under the rubble Monday evening.

According to San Jose fire Capt. Mike Van Elgort, investigators had yet to determine what would cause about a third of the roof at the building at 1480 Nicora Ave. near Mabury Road and Highway 101 to cave in.

"It was one of those buildings with big beam trusses, kind of like spiderwebs that hold the roof up, and one of those came down," he said. "The times I've seen that happen before it was when someone drove a forklift into one of the beams."

But he said there was no such forklift inside the vacant building, which was empty and in the process of being sold, and the collapse is being considered suspicious.

He said they used sonar to probe the rubble and came up negative for signs of a person trapped beneath it.

"A roof collapse is an unusual occurrence, but thankfully at this point it looks like it was just structural and no one was hurt," he said.